‘If the success you’ve had is any measure, your thirst for revenge must have been huge.’
Almost as great as his thirst for revenge on his wife.
He kept his voice steady as he replied, ‘I am not a man to forgive. I forget nothing.’
Anna sat on the sofa, tucking her feet under her bottom and wishing she could put a finger on the danger she felt herself in. She kept her gaze on Stefano and was met with a sparkling gaze and the curve of his lips, yet there were undercurrents to this conversation that she was missing. She could feel it. A darkness, like a shadow that only showed itself intermittently.
‘How did you do it?’
‘I told people I was eighteen and found jobs on building sites and in clubs... Work was easy to find and working in the clubs meant it was easy to find a woman and a bed for the night.’
‘When you were fifteen?’
‘I didn’t look fifteen. Women like a bad boy. I saved as much as I could earn. I’d saved ten thousand euros when I was sent to prison and lost it all in legal fees.’
‘What did you go to prison for? Fighting, wasn’t it?’
‘I saw a man in one of the clubs I worked at hitting a woman.’ He raised his shoulders. ‘I stopped him.’
‘You beat him up?’
‘He deserved it. He was two times her size. She couldn’t defend herself. It was one of many fights I had in those years.’ His smile was wry. ‘The man I beat up that time was a policeman’s son who made sure I went down for it.’
‘Was prison really awful?’ she asked tentatively.
He pulled a face. ‘The worst thing was probably the food. Then the boredom. I had quite an easy time compared to many people but when I left I knew I would never go back. It gave me the focus to change. No more fighting.’
‘What about the bedding of beautiful women?’ she tried to say in a joking voice.
He pulled another face that quite clearly said she was pushing her luck.
If the thought of him bedding others didn’t make her chest contract she would laugh.
‘I had a little money left. I took it to a casino.’
‘You gambled your savings?’
‘A hundred euros. That’s all I had left. If I lost it, I would have earned i
t back the next day and started again but I had a feeling... Like... Like...’ His face scrunched as he tried to think of the word, and Anna was reminded that his English was entirely self-taught.
‘Do you mean you had a gut instinct?’
‘Sì. That’s it. I played it on the roulette table and I won. I won big. I went outside for a cigarette...’
‘Since when do you smoke?’
‘I haven’t for years but I did then. There was another guy out there. He told me about this app he’d designed to track mobile telephone devices. Apps were babies then. Smartphones were babies compared to now. I didn’t understand it but I understood that he did. It was a risk but I’d won that money and decided on one last gamble. I put one hundred euros in my pocket and handed the rest to him. We wrote an agreement on a napkin. Two months later he found me and gave me back my investment plus the interest we’d agreed on. For me, it was the start of everything. Smart technology was my future. I didn’t know how to develop it for myself but I’d proved I could spot a winner. I backed the brains and reaped the rewards.’
‘You’ve always seemed so confident and knowledgeable about the technologies you invest in,’ she said with bemusement.
‘That first deal made me one of the first people to see their full potential. I would say I got lucky but luck had nothing to do with it. Instinct and hard work were what got me where I am.’ He grinned. ‘The best deal I ever made was investing forty per cent in developing that social media site. I made seven billion dollars when it floated on the stock exchange.’
‘I remember that.’ It had happened before he’d bought Levon Brothers and she’d begun working for him. ‘Have you gambled again since that night? In a casino?’
‘Gambling is for morons.’
She laughed and drained her glass. ‘Your revenge must taste very sweet.’